Los Angeles City Council approves $15 an hour wage hike

Workers in Los Angeles are a step closer to a $15 an hour after City Council members approved a measure to increase the minimum wage. The ordinance, still to be approved by the mayor, would gradually raise minimum wage from $9 to $15 an hour by 2020.

The mayor, Eric Garcetti, has said that he would sign the wage
hike bill into law. It would require businesses with more than 25
employees to gradually increase the minimum wage to meet $15 an
hour by 2020. Business with fewer employees would have an extra
year to comply with the measure.

Los Angeles is now the largest city to adopt major a minimum-wage
increase, joining three others that have passed similar
legislation: Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. The move puts
pressure on other large urban centers, such as New York, to do
the same.

The measure would affect the finances of 800,000 people. Based on
a 40-hour workweek, the raise would amount to an additional $48 a
week per worker, or approximately $2,000 a year before taxes for
the next five years.

With the bill’s advance through the local legislature and the
mayor’s pledge to support its passage in law, labor and community
groups who petitioned aggressive for the wage hikes are calling
it a victory.

"After months of public debate and study, the City Council's
vote puts us one step away from changing the lives of hundreds of
thousands of hardworking Angelenos," Rusty Hicks of the Los
Angeles County Federation of Labor said in a written statement.
"Though there is still work to be done, all of us in Los
Angeles will see the fruits of raising the wage in L.A.”

Some business owners are opposed to the wage increase, arguing it
places an “undue burden on businesses.”

“They are asking businesses to foot the bill on a social
experiment that they would never do on their own employees,”
Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce
Association trade group, told the New York Times.

“A lot of businesses aren’t going to make it. It’s great that
this is an increase for some employees, but the sad truth is that
a lot of employees are going to lose their jobs.”

When the Los Angeles bill was first voted on in May, Christine
Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project
said about the organizing efforts, “These are the foot
soldiers in the Fight for $15, who in increasing numbers are
taking to the streets to demand decent wages and organizing
rights.”

“Tens of millions of workers across America – 42 percent of
the workforce – struggle to get by on less than $15 an
hour.”

Owens said the fight began in small town in SeaTac, Washington in
late 2012, and has spread to Seattle and San Francisco and is
being embraced by employers like Facebook and Aetna.

The federal minimum wage is at $7.25 an hour, where it has
remained since 2009, and supporters of raising pay for the lowest
paid workers have expressed little hope for an increase from the
Republican-controlled Congress.